Wednesday, December 21, 2005

This speaks to me

Learn to walk in the sweetness of the possession of your own soul.D.H. Lawrence.

To be influenced or pushed or manipulated into situations that compromise what I believe, who I want to be or what I am -I have a particular awareness of it during Christmas Time. During this time, I find myself hanging on to this syntax of words by D.H. Lawrence.

The expectations of others can be overwhelming-especially the ones that come with conditions! This year, I’ve battled my mother in her efforts to cripple me like she crippled my brother. Throughout his life, he was crippled early on by an enabler and his inability to stand up to her. He was desperate in his battle to be the favored son. In doing so, he sold his soul and in his adulthood he chose surrogate mothers as girlfriends and when they left him, he was further weakened by alcohol as he medicated the pain. In my mother’s home, my brother chose to die last year by drinking himself to death. Death my medication.

I don’t villanise my mother as she was built by powerful events of her time like World War 2. She lived a life hiding in caves terrified of being raped or bayoneted and she hungered for food. Her childhood was stifled by the terror outside. She was a girl who couldn’t play and always lived in fear of the outside world. She resented her father and brothers because they took things away that were rightfully hers. In protecting her, they prevented her from living. Thus, this was her model to raise her children.

Upon my brother’s death, she relied on me handle my brothers affairs, sell her land, and handle her trust. During this time there was an insidious undermining of my efforts. The second guessing and the numerous advisors who would have her ear and then she would do nothing. She would take no action. It felt like her giving me money and then snatching it away from me at the last moment unless conditions were met. The message I received was my efforts didn’t matter and that she didn’t trust me. Intellectually, I wanted to help her. Unconsciously I grew to want and fight for favored son status. I fell into emotional trap of money and material value being equated to love. My intellect fought with my emotion. It took me months to become aware of this battle and while the battle raged I was immobilized like solitary confinement without dark or light.

I want what makes her content and brings her happines. For me, being loving forgives but it doesn't let go of the awareness of the jagged rapier in her hands. I will take time to visit her and give gifts. I suspect I will wear leaded armor because she is kryptonite. My saving grace my deep friendships who see truth in my actions and share their honest thoughts. This work has helped me understand and acknowledge that I have no need or want of her possessions or her machinations of manipulation. My friendships have given me a basis of what being loved looks like. All of this among other things brings my intellect and my emotions congruency and thus my soul has never felt so sweet.

Both my parents are deceased, and it has just further alienated my siblings from one another. My mom drove me nuts, but she kept the family together. Now that she is gone, the ugly truth has reared: the 4 of us really don't like each other much, nor care much what happens to the other. I finally realized that and I am even starting to get comfortable with this startling fact. Friends are my blood.

I come to the same conclusions with my friends. My family is part of who I am and in my ongoing process of forgiveness, it has helped me accept some of my angst. I don't want to be contemptous of human failings like Nietzche was.

Both my parents have passed too, and I have also experienced the alienation and estrangement between my 7 siblings and myself. For 5 years we were angry and at war with each other over the things that my mother left behind. Now most of us have reached a place where we can be civil to each other and attend family functions without any fighting. But like Enemy, I realize that I really don’t like most of them either and I too cherish my friends and have adopted them as my new family of choice. I aspire to healthy ways of thinking and living. Most of my siblings still try to get together for the holidays out of habit. It always causes some pathological hurt as different ones try to fill the role of my mother and father. They even try to coerce me to join them. But I know better than to put myself in that environment, so I stay away, using the distance as an excuse.

I enjoyed the distance this time! I chose not to spend Xmas with family with the exception of my child. My son commented how peaceful Xmas was. Later on in the week, my male friends got together to do steaks, fart, burp, tell dirty jokes and drink beer. To a man we enjoyed each others company from the pressures of family, relationships, and roles we had to fill. We could be real instead of being civil.